eInteract is the first tool that provides an interactive sales environment on your website. A key advantage is to assist in fulfilling a prospect’s needs by furnishing expertise to translate or match the prospect’s requirements to your product capabilities or offering. It also helps them buy without a salesperson. It can help you cross-sell. Furthermore, it assists the web client by allowing them to accurately configure an order or product. And eInteract enables your company to dynamically collect critical data necessary to easily complete an Internet transaction.

eInteract extends WrightTools’ standard functionality to your website. eInteract extends your product and system (sales) configurator to the web, adding a tool for interaction with the Internet user and helping you to complete more sales transactions.

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The power of WrightTools’ Configurator+ is extended to the Internet with the use of the eInteract module. eInteract provides significant advantages by helping the selling company to cross-sell, replacing the need the need for sales personnel and engineers, and at the same time ensuring quoting and configuration accuracy. eInteract can be implemented to significantly enhance the way a selling company conducts business through its sales channels. The selling company can more greatly impact these enhancements through its implementation of eInteract as part of a shopping cart, quote, or order placement tool.

This section covers eInteract and describes its potential for putting your best salesperson’s expertise in front of your customer or prospect.

eInteract provides product and sales configuration along with the ability for Internet customers to identify products based upon their needs. An Internet user can specify a requirement, use a feature-option approach, or provide a functional requirement without the need to invoke a live salesperson. It supports both front and back office requirements.

The power of eInteract is in its implementation, which is relative to the type of transaction being managed by the user. The way the engine files are written (logic behind the interactive process) is just as important, leveraging the way information and configurations are communicated to the user. It also gives you the ability to cross sell.

eInteract is also available on a stand-alone basis for developers or web-development staff.

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Standard shopping cart technologies find a product with a basic search mechanism and "place" it into a shopping cart. This standard may be sufficient, depending upon the simplicity and type of products being sold. However, manufacturers, especially those with complex or custom-built products, indicate that a salesperson is traditionally required to guide the user to the right products. eInteract provides interactive selling without the costs associated with a "live" salesperson.

With the addition of eInteract the nature of finding and selecting items is greatly enhanced. In addition, configuring selected items becomes standard functionality.

Finding and Selecting Items: Finding and selecting the appropriate item over the Internet can now be powered by using rules and object-based logic. The selling company defines the question-and-answer logic based upon their selling experience. The logic or "engine" is capable of building a bill of material, or list of parts, in response to the answers the user provided. This list is then handed back to the Web Client to be displayed as a group of items that meet the logic of the inquiry or request. These may be added to a shopping cart as a group, or individual items may be selected from the list. Further reference information on a given product can be investigated on individual items. It also allows cross selling to occur. In the case of cross selling, a major item fitting the prospect’s needs is presented along with a group of accessories or complimentary items.

This logic is similar to the "order level" configuration supported on the network version of Configurator+. The front-end application determines what needs to be done with the list of parts selected based upon the user’s answers. How the engine logic presents the interactivity questions and answers is user defined. The rules should be written to mimic the way a good salesperson would respond to an inquiry and meet the buyer’s needs.

Configuring Selected Items: Once a product is selected, the user can then follow the configuration rules necessary to configure the product; either before or after it is added to the shopping cart. Any combination of three implementation methods may be utilized, including code-driven, specification-driven, and/or functionally driven. The result of the selected responses will be listed. The result of the configuration run can generate a bill of materials, routing, and set of processing instructions for the back office system that is related to the quote or order record. The implementation of pricing will be dependent on whether the selling company has charges for the additional features and options selected, or if it provides one price for any features and options selected.

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eInteract offers three major capabilities to a user that is working on a specific quote or order: product configuration, order or system configuration, and scripting. While a shopping cart selection may be used to build a quote or order, these functions relate to a more traditional approach of quoting and ordering. The user in a complex manufacturing environment tends to more sophisticated and speed of entry may be of key importance. These three functions are mirrored in the network version of WrightTools.

Product configuration is the selection of attributes or features required of a particular manufacturer’s part. Order or system configuration ensures that a group of items being ordered are compatible to work together. Scripting provides an ability to collect information from a customer or prospect relative to the overall order or quote based upon rules.

Production Configuration: Depending upon the selling company’s requirements and in order to determine the final configuration, further definition of a selected product may be requested. The way the rules are written defines the way the product configuration interacts with the user. This may be code-driven, specified (allowing the user to stipulate the product requirements) or functional (allowing a user to determine the way in which the product is to be used or to describe a problem to be solved). Any combination of these may be invoked. An additional capability allows specifications to be collected for a product that may then require a manual estimate. This capability allows the core data to be collected and passed to a sales engineer. The sales engineer can use the EasyEstimate module to estimate and publish the quote back to the user (see EasyEstimate module for details).

Order or System Configuration: Order or system configuration allows the user to select a group of products and/or services to be quoted or ordered. Order or system configuration ensures that all of the selected items are compatible and that required items are included in the order or quote. These may be code-driven, specification-driven, or functionally driven interactive sessions. After performing an order or system configuration, products requiring further definition may be selected. Product configuration of an individual line within a group is handled within the parameters of that group, and by default inherit the group’s properties.

Scripting: Applications for scripting range from collecting necessary data to process a letter of credit, credit application information, win/loss data, or any process where a given response may trigger different questions. It is used when fixed forms are not appropriate. The advantage is that the user only has to enter pertinent data and is guided through the process. Scripting follows the logic rules as determined and written by the selling company. The major difference is that the collection of responses to the interactive prompts is the primary objective, versus the generation of items and services needed. Scripting is associated only with quote or order headers (is linked to the entire quote or order).

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eInteract provides an extension of your sales expertise to help customers, distributors and prospects select and configure the right products for their purchase. It is a tremendous competitive advantage because it eliminates the high overhead associated with selling through less-than-perfectly-educated sales channels. The end user’s process is simplified and on-demand, thereby increasing your ability to convert opportunities into orders.

eInteract ensures the accuracy of quotes and orders every time, including making sure the right services accompany an order and guaranteeing that all selected products can work together. It communicates valuable information while the user is online. No waiting around to interact with a "live" person. In other words, customers stay with your company and buy your products.

Now is the time to get ahead with WrightTools.

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